Lufthansa flight 540

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Lufthansa flight 540
19700712 LH Jumbo GFAu46kl15.jpg

The Hessians shortly after their extradition in 1970
Accident summary
Accident type Stall at take-off due to not deployed buoyancy aids
place Nairobi airport
date November 20, 1974
Fatalities 59
Survivors 98
Aircraft
Aircraft type Boeing 747-130
operator Lufthansa
Mark D-ABYB
Surname Hesse
Departure airport GermanyGermany Frankfurt am Main airport
Stopover KenyaKenya Nairobi Embakasi Airport
Destination airport South Africa 1961South Africa Johannesburg Airport
Passengers 140
crew 17th
Lists of aviation accidents

Lufthansa Flight 540 was a scheduled flight of Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Johannesburg with a stopover in Nairobi . On November 20, 1974, the Boeing 747-130 used crashed shortly after take-off from Nairobi Embakasi Airport ( Jomo Kenyatta International Airport since 1978 ), killing 59 of the 157 occupants. Of the 98 survivors, 73 were almost uninjured.

plane

The four- engined Boeing 747 with the serial number 19747/29 was delivered to Lufthansa on April 13, 1970 with the aircraft registration D-ABYB , which gave it the name Hessen . The “Jumbo Jet” was the second 747 delivered to Lufthansa and was four and a half years old at the time of the accident.

Course of the accident

After a change of crew, Flight 540 was supposed to take off shortly before 8 a.m. local time in Nairobi under the leadership of flight captain Christian Krack in the direction of Johannesburg. The flight handling of the route was the responsibility of co-pilot Joachim Schacke. The take -off weight of the 747 was 254 tonnes and thus well below the maximum take-off weight.

After taking off from Runway 24 , violent vibrations set in, which the pilots interpreted as a problem with one of the four engines. The landing gear was then retracted and the aircraft's angle of attack was reduced in order to be able to climb with less engine power. The copilot in charge of the aircraft nevertheless noticed a complete loss of acceleration and was therefore unable to keep the aircraft in the air. The first contact with the ground occurred 1120 meters behind the end of the runway, about 100 meters further the machine began to break apart. The rear part of the aircraft broke off behind the wing root , approximately between doors 3 and 4, as a result of the impact at a high angle.

This section caught fire due to the frictional heat, large amounts of fuel in the tanks below and the hot engine nozzles on the wings. Almost none of the people in this section survived. The front half of the machine survived the impact with significantly less damage, which made it possible for almost all passengers located there to escape via emergency slides or other openings in the aircraft fuselage. Mainly there were back injuries as a result of the impact. The upper deck with the cockpit of the 747 and the on-board bar, in which nobody was allowed to be during the take-off phase, broke through on impact on the lower deck, but did not injure anyone there. The three-person cockpit crew saved themselves by abseiling over the fuselage via a designated emergency exit in the cockpit ceiling.

Causes and consequences

The failure to extend the Kruger flaps was found to be the cause of the accident . These buoyancy aids would have led to significantly more buoyancy in the start phase. Although the selector lever was set to extend, the slats remained in the retracted position, since the crew did not activate the pneumatic extension system, which had to be activated separately. In the short term this error was not noticed. Ultimately, the blame was distributed on Lufthansa because of the incorrect processing of the checklists by the crew and Boeing because of the inadequate safety precautions against incorrect operation.

As a result of this accident, Boeing introduced a warning signal and coupled the deployment of the Kruger flaps to the operation of the throttle controls, so that the high-lift flaps can only be operated together with the slats .

Lufthansa accused the 53-year-old captain and the 51-year-old flight engineer Rudi Hahn with serious operating errors. Both were terminated without notice, but a labor court overturned the termination because at the time of termination there was no official investigation report that could have excluded a technical defect.

Criminal proceedings were only initiated against the flight engineer who may have operated a bleed switch incorrectly. The trial ended in 1981 with Hahn's acquittal.

Despite the accident and the ensuing damage to the image of the aircraft name Hessen , Lufthansa gave it back to a Boeing 747-400 , which was delivered in 1998. The air vehicle registration D-ABYB , however, has not applied for Lufthansa for a machine at the Federal Aviation Authority, although the letters D-ABY ... was used in the introduction of version 747-8.

See also

literature

  • Aviation: green or yellow . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1979, pp. 62-64 ( online ).
  • With a lot of courage and sadness . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1981, p. 82-84 ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Note in: Das Jahr im Bild 1975 (looking back at the end of 1974), Carlsen Verlag , Hamburg 1975, p. 9.
  2. ↑ Boeing 747 - MSN 19747. airfleets.net, accessed on March 2, 2014 (English).
  3. ^ "Refueling in den Tod" , Austrian Wings, November 20, 2014, accessed on September 6, 2016.
  4. ↑ With a lot of courage and sadness . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1981, p. 82-84 ( online ).
  5. ↑ List of Lufthansa aircraft ( Memento of the original from April 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at lh-taufnamen.de , accessed on January 1, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lh-taufnamen.de
  6. ↑ Second Lufthansa Boeing 747-8 arrives in Frankfurt. In: Aero.de. July 2, 2012, accessed on April 12, 2019 : “In the alphabetical D-ABY_ registration of its new Jumbo fleet, Lufthansa omits the" D-ABYB "indicator. The Lufthansa 747-100 "Hessen" was registered as the "Yankee Bravo". It crashed on November 20, 1974 shortly after taking off from Nairobi. 59 of the 157 people on board were killed in the accident on Lufthansa flight 540. "

Coordinates: 1 ° 19 ′ 9.1 ″  S , 36 ° 55 ′ 39 ″  E